Ink, Silk, and Gold explores the dynamic and complex traditions of Islamic art through more than 115 major works in a dazzling array of media, reproduced in full color and exquisite detail - manuscripts inscribed with gold, paintings on silk, elaborate metalwork, intricately woven textiles, luster-painted ceramics, and more. These objects, which originated within an Islamic world that ranges from Western Europe to Indonesia and across more than thirteen centuries, share a distinctive relationship to the materials they are made of: their color, shape, texture, and technique of production all convey meaning. Enhanced by texts from an international team of scholars and drawing on the latest technical information, Ink, Silk, and Gold is an inviting introduction to the riches of the Islamic art collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a window into a vibrant global culture.

Islam's relationship to liberal-democratic politics has emerged as one of the most pressing and contentious issues in international affairs. In Islam, Secularism, and Liberal Democracy, Nader Hashemi challenges the widely held belief among social scientists that religious politics and liberal-democratic development are structurally incompatible. This book argues for a rethinking of democratic theory so that it incorporates the variable of religion in the development of liberal democracy. In the process, it proves that an indigenous theory of Muslim secularism is not only possible, but is a necessary requirement for the advancement of liberal democracy in Muslim societies.

When Sultan bin Salman left Earth on the shuttle Discovery in 1985, he became the first Arab, first Muslim and first member of a royal family in space. Twenty-five years later, the discovery of a planet 500 light years away by the Qatar Exoplanet Survey - subsequently named `Qatar-1b' - was evidence of the cutting-edge space science projects taking place across the Middle East. This book identifies the individuals, institutions and national ideologies that enabled Arab astronomers and researchers to gain support for space exploration when Middle East governments lacked interest. Jorg Matthias Determann shows that the conquest of space became associated with national prestige, security, economic growth and the idea of an `Arab renaissance' more generally. Equally important to this success were international collaborations: to benefit from American and Soviet expertise and technology, Arab scientists and officials had to commit to global governance of space and the common interests of humanity. Challenging the view that the golden age of Arabic science and cosmopolitanism was situated in the medieval period, Determann tells the story of the new discoveries and scientific collaborations taking place from the 19th century to the present day. An innovative contribution to Middle East studies and history of science, the book also appeals to increased business, media and political interest in the Arab space industry.

Immigration has long been associated with the urban landscape, from accounts of inner-city racial tension and discrimination during the 1960s and 1970s and studies of minority communities of the 1980s and 1990s, to the increased focus on cities amongst contemporary scholars of migration and diaspora. Though cities have long provided the geographical frameworks within which a significant share of post-war migration has taken place, Sarah Hackett argues that that there has long existed a rural dimension to Muslim integration in Britain. This book offers the first comprehensive study of Muslim migrant integration in rural Britain across the post-1960s period, examining the previously unexplored relationship between Muslim integration and rurality by using the county of Wiltshire in the South West of England as a case study. Drawing upon a range of archival material and oral histories, it challenges the long-held assumption that local authorities in more rural areas have been inactive, and even disinterested, in devising and implementing migration, integration and diversity policies, and sheds light on smaller and more dispersed Muslim communities that have traditionally been written out of Britain's immigration history. -- .

Home to approximately one-fifth of the world's Muslim population, Indonesia and Malaysia are often overlooked or misrepresented in media discourses about Islam. Islam is a religion but there is also a popular culture, or popular cultures of Islam that are mass mediated, commercialized, pleasure-filled, humorous, and representative of large segments of society. During the last forty years, popular forms of Islam, targeted largely towards urbanized youth, have played a key role in the Islamisation of Indonesia and Malaysia. This book focuses on these forms and the accompanying practices of production, circulation, marketing, and consumption of Islam. Dispelling the notion that Islam is monolithic, militaristic, and primarily Middle Eastern, the book emphasizes its dynamic, contested, and performative nature in contemporary South East Asia. Written by leading scholars alongside media figures, such as Rhoma Irama and Ishadi SK, the case studies although not focused on theology per se, illuminate how Muslims (and non-Muslims) in Indonesia and Malaysia make sense of their lives within an increasingly pervasive culture of Islamic images, texts, film, songs, and narratives.

Dr Kozlowski's important study pioneers a fresh approach to the study of a critical Muslim institution: the endowments or awqaf which almost everywhere in the Islamic world provide support for mosques, schools and shrines. The wealthier Muslims who establish endowments inevitably have an eye on social, political and economic conditions and have traditionally used awqaf as part of an effort to preserve their wealth and influence, especially in periods of change and uncertainty. The book focuses on the use of endowments by Muslims suffering the dislocations caused by the imposition of British rule in India and examines in detail the social and political implications of the controversy over endowments that took place in the imperial courts and councils. The author's observations and insights can be applied to many periods and places in the Muslim world and his novel approach will attract all those interested in the study of Islam.

Muslim beliefs have inspired charitable giving for over fourteen centuries, yet Islamic history has rarely been examined from this perspective. In Charity in Islamic Societies, Amy Singer explains the basic concepts and institutions of Muslim charity, including the obligation to give on an annual basis. Charitable endowments shaped Muslim societies and cultures in every era. This book demonstrates how historical circumstances, social status, gender, age and other factors interacted with religious ideals to create a rich variety of charitable practices, from the beginnings of Islam to the present day. Using written texts, buildings, images and objects to anchor the discussions in each chapter, the author explores the motivations for charity, its impact on the rich and the poor, and the politicisation of charity. This lucidly written book will capture the attention of anyone who is interested in the nature of Islamic society and the role of philanthropy throughout history.

Media reporting on Islam and Muslims commonly relate stories about terrorism, violence, or the lack of integration with western values and society. Yet there is little research into how non-Muslims engage with and are affected by these news reports. Inspired by the overtly negative coverage of Islam and Muslims by the mainstream press and the increase in Islamophobia across Europe, this book explores the influence of these depictions on the thoughts and actions of non-Muslims. Building on extensive fieldwork interviews and focus groups, Laurens de Rooij argues that individuals negotiate media reports to fit their existing outlook on Islam and Muslims. Non-Muslim responses to these reports, de Rooij argues, are not only (re)productions of local and personal contextuality, but are co-dependent and co-productive to the reports themselves. -- .

After 9/11, there was an increase in both the incidence of hate crimes and government policies that targeted Arabs and Muslims and the proliferation of sympathetic portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media. Arabs and Muslims in the Media examines this paradox and investigates the increase of sympathetic images of "the enemy" during the War on Terror. Evelyn Alsultany explains that a new standard in racial and cultural representations emerged out of the multicultural movement of the 1990s that involves balancing a negative representation with a positive one, what she refers to as "simplified complex representations." This has meant that if the storyline of a TV drama or film represents an Arab or Muslim as a terrorist, then the storyline also includes a "positive" representation of an Arab, Muslim, Arab American, or Muslim American to offset the potential stereotype. Analyzing how TV dramas such as West Wing, The Practice, 24, Threat Matrix, The Agency, Navy NCIS, and Sleeper Cell, news-reporting, and non-profit advertising have represented Arabs, Muslims, Arab Americans, and Muslim Americans during the War on Terror, this book demonstrates how more diverse representations do not in themselves solve the problem of racial stereotyping and how even seemingly positive images can produce meanings that can justify exclusion and inequality.

Immigrants from Pakistan, Egypt, India, and Palestine who were racially profiled and detained following the September 11 attacks tell their personal stories in a collection which explores themes of transnationalism, racialization, and the global war on terror, and explains the human cost of suspending civil liberties after a wartime emergency.

How can we address the seemingly endless conflicts in the world, particularly those arising from misunderstandings of Islam by both Muslims and non-Muslims? Preventing Violence and Achieving World Peace: The Contributions of the Gulen Movement presents the essays of eight scholars who consider the diverse ways in which the Gulen Movement or hizmet ("service to others") - inspired by contemporary Turkish social philosopher Fetullah Gulen - has worked to answer this question. Drawing from various intellectual and theological sources, particularly Sufism, these essays indicate multiple instances of positive interfaith and/or multicultural dialogue. In addition, they consider how the writings of Gulen and the works of the Gulen Movement, through an extensive program of education and communication, have contributed significantly to efforts that oppose violence and shape universal peace.

The Pukhtuns are numerically and politically one of the most significant ethno-linguistic groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This important study of Pukhtun society concentrates on the lives, thoughts and gham-khadi (funerals-weddings) ceremonies of the women, especially of the elite, wealthy and educated women (Bibiane) who have largely been overlooked in previous studies. Contesting their conventional representation as idle, it illustrates their commitment to various forms of work within familial and social contexts. It challenges the commonly assumed models of contemporary Pakistan society, which make a simplistic divide between rural and urban, Punjab and non-Punjab, and feudal and non-feudal spaces and peoples. It also contributes to broader debates about the nature and expression of elite cultures and issues of sociality, funerals and marriage, custom and religion, space and gender, morality and reason, and social role and personhood within the contexts of Islam in the Middle East and South Asia.

Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series American Arabesque examines representations of Arabs, Islam and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we understand them today. Moving from the period of America's engagement in the Barbary Wars through the Holy Land travel mania in the years of Jacksonian expansion and into the writings of romantics such as Edgar Allen Poe, the book argues that not only were Arabs and Muslims prominently featured in nineteenth-century literature, but that the differences writers established between figures such as Moors, Bedouins, Turks and Orientals provide proof of the transnational scope of domestic racial politics. Drawing on both English and Arabic language sources, Berman contends that the fluidity and instability of the term Arab as it appears in captivity narratives, travel narratives, imaginative literature, and ethnic literature simultaneously instantiate and undermine definitions of the American nation and American citizenship.

This selection of the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad was made by the internationally respected British Muslim scholar, Charles le Gai Eaton. The Book of Hadith captures not only the practical and profound wisdom of the Prophet, but his human side as well. Contains Arabic text as well.

High rates of divorce, often taken to be a modern and western phenomenon, were also typical of medieval Islamic societies. By pitting these high rates of divorce against the Islamic ideal of marriage, Yossef Rapoport radically challenges usual assumptions about the legal inferiority of Muslim women and their economic dependence on men. He argues that marriages in late medieval Cairo, Damascus and Jerusalem had little in common with the patriarchal models advocated by jurists and moralists. The transmission of dowries, women's access to waged labour, and the strict separation of property between spouses made divorce easy and normative, initiated by wives as often as by their husbands. This carefully researched work of social history is interwoven with intimate accounts of individual medieval lives, making for a truly compelling read. It will be of interest to scholars of all disciplines concerned with the history of women and gender in Islam.

"Hadith Literature: Its Origin, Development & Special Features", written by Professor Muhammad Zubayr Siddiqi, is an introduction which presents the various aspects of the subject of Hadith and its importance within Islam. Hadith, the sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, form a sacred literature which for Muslims ranks second in importance only to the Qur'an itself. As a source of law, ethics and doctrine, the vast corpus of Hadith continues to exercise decisive influence. "Hadith Literature: Its Origin, Development & Special Features" explains the origin of Hadith literature, the evolution of the "isnad" system, the troubled relationship between scholars and the state, the problem of falsification, and the gradual development of a systematic approach to the material. An interesting appendix demonstrates that a high proportion of the medieval Hadith scholars were women. This edition is a fully revised and updated version of the original, which was first published in 1961 to considerable scholarly acclaim.

In Egypt Islamists clash with secularists over religious and national identity, while in Turkey secularist ruling elites have chosen to accommodate Islamists in the name of democracy and reconciliation. As Islam spreads throughout the world, Muslims living in their traditional homelands and in the Western world are grappling with shifting identities. In all cases, understanding the dynamics of identity-based politics is critical to the future of Muslims and their neighbors across the globe.In "Muslims in Global Politics," Mahmood Monshipouri examines the role identity plays in political conflicts in six Muslim nations--Egypt, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iran, and Indonesia--as well as in Muslim diaspora communities in Europe and North America. In each instance, he describes how conservatives, neofundamentalists, reformists, and secularists construct identity in different ways and how these identities play out in the political arena. With globalization, the demand for human rights continues to grow in the Muslim world, and struggles over modernity, authenticity, legitimacy, and rationality become increasingly important."Muslims in Global Politics" deepens our understanding of how modern ideas and norms interact with the traditions of the Islamic world and, in turn, shows how human rights advocates can provide an alternative to militant Islamist movements.

The Isma'ilis represent the second largest Shii Muslim community after the Twelvers, and are today scattered throughout more than twenty-five countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America. This 2007 second edition of this authoritative book traces the history and doctrinal development of the Isma'ilis from their origins in the formative period of Islam to the present day, a period of more than twelve centuries. All the major phases of Isma'ili history are covered, including the pre-Fatimid period, the Fatimid 'golden age', the Tayyibi-Mustali period and the history of the Nizari Isma'ilis of Persia and Syria before the Mongol invasions. The final part traces the history of the modern Isma'ilis, particularly the socio-economic progress of the Nizari communities. The new edition is a thorough revision and incorporates new material, an expanded bibliography and new illustrations. It will be invaluable reading for students of Islamic and Middle Eastern history.

Why were urban women veiled in the early 1900s, unveiled from 1936 to 1979, and reveiled after the 1979 revolution? This question forms the basis of Hamideh Sedghi's original and unprecedented contribution to politics and Middle Eastern studies. Using primary and secondary sources, Sedghi offers new knowledge on women's agency in relation to state power. In this rigorous analysis she places contention over women at the centre of the political struggle between secular and religious forces and demonstrates that control over women's identities, sexuality, and labor has been central to the consolidation of state power. Sedghi links politics and culture with economics to present an integrated analysis of the private and public lives of different classes of women and their modes of resistance to state power.

Adam Silverstein's book offers a fascinating account of the official methods of communication employed in the Near East from pre-Islamic times through the Mamluk period. Postal systems were set up by rulers in order to maintain control over vast tracts of land. These systems, invented centuries before steam-engines or cars, enabled the swift circulation of different commodities - from letters, people and horses to exotic fruits and ice. As the correspondence transported often included confidential reports from a ruler's provinces, such postal systems doubled as espionage-networks through which news reached the central authorities quickly enough to allow a timely reaction to events. The book sheds light not only on the role of communications technology in Islamic history, but also on how nomadic culture contributed to empire-building in the Near East. This is a long-awaited contribution to the history of pre-modern communications systems in the Near Eastern world.

The treatment and role of women is one of the most discussed and controversial aspects of Islam. In this volume, three respected scholars of Islam survey the situation of women in Islam, focusing on how Muslim views about and experiences of gender are changing in the Western diaspora. It offers an overview of the teachings of the Qur'an and the Prophet Muhammad on gender, analyzes the ways in which the West has historically viewed Muslim women, and examines how the Muslim world has changed in response to Western critiques. The volume then centers on the Muslim experience in America, examining Muslim American analyses of gender, Muslim attempts to form a new "American" Islam, and the legal issues surrounding equal rights for Muslim females. Such specific issues as dress, marriage, child custody, and asylum are addressed. It also looks at the ways in which American Muslim women have tried to create new paradigms of Islamic womanhood and are reinterpreting the traditions apart from the males who control the mosque institutions.

Americans have learned in elementary school that their country was founded by a group of brave, white, largely British Christians. Modern reinterpretations recognize the contributions of African and indigenous Americans, but the basic premise has persisted. This groundbreaking study fundamentally challenges the traditional national storyline by postulating that many of the initial colonists were actually of Sephardic Jewish and Muslin Moorish ancestry. Supporting references include historical writings, ship manifests, wills, land grants, DNA test results, genealogies, and settler lists that provide for the first time the Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Jewish origins of more than 5,000 surnames, the majority widely assumed to be British. By documenting the widespread presence of Jews and Muslims in prominent economic, political, financial and social positions in all of the original colonies, this innovative work offers a fresh perspective on the early American experience.

As Senegal prepares to celebrate fifty years of independence from French colonial rule, academic and policy circles are engaged in a vigorous debate about its experience in nation building. An important aspect of this debate is the impact of globalization on Senegal, particularly the massive labor migration that began directly after independence. From Tokyo to Melbourne, from Turin to Buenos Aires, from to Paris to New York, 300,000 Senegalese immigrants are simultaneously negotiating their integration into their host society and seriously impacting the development of their homeland.
This book addresses the modes of organization of transnational societies in the globalized context, and specifically the role of religion in the experience of migrant communities in Western societies. Abundant literature is available on immigrants from Latin America and Asia, but very little on Africans, especially those from French speaking countries in the United States. Ousmane Kane offers a case study of the growing Senegalese community in New York City. By pulling together numerous aspects (religious, ethnic, occupational, gender, generational, socio-economic, and political) of the experience of the Senegalese migrant community into an integrated analysis, linking discussion of both the homeland and host community, this book breaks new ground in the debate about postcolonial Senegal, Muslim globalization and diaspora studies in the United States. A leading scholar of African Islam, Ousmane Kane has also conducted extensive research in North America, Europe and Africa, which allows him to provide an insightful historical ethnography of the Senegalese transnational experience.